corn smut

Yes, you read that title right. Read it slowly out loud:

Corn. Smut.

I thought perhaps I read it wrong when perusing Wikipedia's List of Taco Fillings. Nik and I were mutually bored at work when we started to discuss what's for dinner. For fun I checked Wikipedia's taco entry.

And I learned something. Something quite frightening. Lo and behold, corn smut!

Corn smut is a disease of maize caused by the pathogenic plant fungus Ustilago maydis. U. maydis causes smut disease on maize (Zea mays) and teosinte (Euchlena mexicana). Although it can infect any part of the plant it usually enters the ovaries and replaces the normal kernels of the cobs with large distorted tumors analogous to mushrooms. These tumors, or "galls", are made up of much-enlarged cells of the infected plant, fungal threads, and blue-black spores. The spores give the cob a burned, scorched appearance.
- from Wikipedia

Yummy. "Diseased corn."

But it gets better. Read some dude's experience in eating a can of corn smut (with excellent photos). It was once featured as Tom Volk's Fungus of the Month in March 1998.

Yurgh.